Motivational Factors are Important for Career Success and Personal Happiness

Georg gathered work experience in different positions and departments across F&B, Rooms Division and Sales & Marketing in Italy (South Tyrol and Sardegna), Spain (Mallorca), Czech Republic (Prague) and Austria (Tyrol, Carinthia, Vienna) before moving up to F&B Manager and later Resident Manager, then becoming Assistant General Manager of 2 Hotels in Vienna with his first pre-opening experience. Since 2008 he has been General Manager of Punta Skala Resort with the properties Hotel & Spa Iadera***** (opened 2011), Family Hotel Diadora****S (opened 2009), Senia Residences****(*) (opened 2010) with Premium Living Services and Apartments Petrcane**** (opened 2013), a grand total of 781 units with approximately 500 employees during the summer months. In 2013, Georg was also made Interim General Manager for Schlosshotel Velden***** on Woerther Lake.

Q: What does it take to be a meetings star winner?Certainly great operations and a great sales team, and knowledge in banquets, meetings and events as well as proactive staff who are always on the lookout for new meeting opportunities.

Good infrastructure helps as well, but I would also say that team effort and enthusiasm in making a client’s meeting great is essential.

Q: What are your biggest challenges?For the meeting industry the biggest challenge in Punta Skala is connectivity in the shoulder months. As you know, Zadar is connected with different charter flights and low cost flights from April to October, and in the off-season our only connection is via Zagreb. This makes international meetings hard to get.

Q: How do you use social media? Luckily, we have an extremely motivated and enthusiastic social media team in Punta Skala and we get all the support from our corporate office when it comes to new tools and trends. We believe that with the use of social media we are able to communicate our product and services in real time to our guests. In addition, social media is providing many opportunities for communication with users in video or other formats. This is very valuable for us when we are promoting events like Falkensteiner Punta Skala Triathlon.

Q: How do you best motivate your staff?We give the utmost attention in Punta Skala to team spirit and developing opportunities for our employees to grow. Our company has its own Falkensteiner Academy with a selection of programmes aimed at developing and strengthening skills in all areas: front desk, sales, food and beverages, SPA… One of the core values in Falkensteiner is ‘Family’, and in Punta Skala we try to live up to that value by providing an environment in which our people feel respected, safe and valuable. I personally believe that intrinsic motivational factors are far more important for career success and personal happiness.

Q: Which other hotels do you admire?It is of upmost importance to have clear positioning and to work continuously on product development in order to create the “WOW”effect on a regular basis for our customers, and this can be independent of the location, concept or star rating of any relevant property. I would therefore not reference any specific hotel, although I am always observing those hotels where I can see that they never go into a comfort zone, but are always thinking what they can do in order to get better in the sense of operational excellence and high customer satisfaction, also by “thinking out of the box” and moving towards new and creative techniques.

Just being “normal” is no longer enough and at the end of the day the financial figures also have to bring a satisfactory ROI. Last but not least, without satisfied employees it will be hard to satisfy our clients, so it is already (and will be even more so in future) of the upmost importance to keep yourself also attractive as an employment company. Therefore, I admire those hotels/properties who can combine those few requirements the best.